Shopping

Chapter 22 Purchasing

Li Wuxiang turned to look at Xue Baoping and found her standing at the door, her chest rising and falling rapidly, as if she had just had a fight. After looking at each other with Li Wu, he took a deep breath and a trembling smile appeared on his face, as if his face had been stretched for too long due to the tension and excitement just now, but he didn't know what to say.

Li Wuxiang smiled at her and said, "Sorry."

Xue Baoping was stunned: "Ah?"

"I'm sorry for asking you to open the door and making you hear those words." He sighed, picked up the wooden shovel from the door of the wing, and filled the bright red blood puddle on the ground with wet mud, "But this is the simplest and most effective way. There is no way to reason with someone who bullies the weak and is afraid of the strong. Treating them like just now The most direct way. But I can't let them think that I am an unstable and dangerous person, otherwise they will go to the town owner to find a solution, so I have to ask them to provoke me first and then find out about me. It’s not easy to mess with, but until then, it’s harmless to humans and animals.”

Xue Baoping took a few more breaths before he came back to his senses: "Then... will they go find the town owner -"

"Can I just enter the town lord's house?"

"It doesn't seem possible. Someone is guarding the door..."

"Then, did the three Wang father and sons kill anyone in your town before?"

"No...no, what's wrong?"

"Then there's nothing to worry about. I'm beating up an idle man with no relatives and no reason. Who will file a lawsuit? Even if I file a lawsuit, you town masters probably won't care. The Wang family and his son can do anything in your town. Evil people who don’t dare to provoke—they are even afraid of people like that, so they have no reason to continue to provoke me.”

Li Wuxiang washed the mud off the shovel in the puddle, raised his head and smiled at her: "This is what this troubled world is like. When you want to stay in peace, you will always be unlucky. But if you want to be an outlaw, Disciple, then we will find that everything goes smoothly. We will not be evil people, but we will not be unlucky good people."

"My parents used to tell me to be a good person..." Xue Baoping thought for a moment, "but I think it's more comfortable to be like this with you."

The first meal of the day for the two of them was a meal of millet porridge, but it was not watery at all. They ate the remaining half a handful of millet. Xue Baoping ate rice, and Li Wuxiang drank soup. Xue Baoping sat at the door and took two bites before looking at him awkwardly: "Actually, I can really eat less."

Li Wuxiang shook his head: "Actually, I really don't want to eat rice. You know I'm not human -"

Xue Baoping quickly held the bowl and looked around guiltily.

"——That's why I like to eat meat more. I tried dried meat these days and it was very uncomfortable to eat. It's just like rice and it's not digestible. I just feel a little better today. So we need to get more meat."

"Then, we still have money...don't you want them to think you have money?"

"That's our principal. We have other uses for the afternoon. Don't worry, we should be able to make more of it." Li Wuxiang stared at the blood stains he had buried in front of the door and sipped the rice soup. " Tell me more about the town owner’s family and his daughter’s name.”

"Chen Xiu... I haven't seen her for a long time. The last time I saw her was last year. In the summer, she sat in a big wooden basin and rowed across the river. At that time, there were lotus and water chestnuts in the river. She collected water chestnuts from the river to eat. She came to me to ask for a bowl of water and gave me a handful of water chestnuts. "

"So she doesn't bring any maids or servants. So where does she usually stay? What are her hobbies?"

"Ah... She has servants in her family. There seem to be several of them. They farm the land and feed the horses for them. One year -"

Li Wuxiang drank rice soup while staring at the blood slowly seeping out of the wet mud, and listened to Xue Baoping tell him everything he saw and heard bit by bit. She has become more and more fluent in speaking these days. When she is not particularly anxious, it is almost impossible to tell that she has a language barrier. Instead, she just thinks that she is a normal girl who likes to chat and speaks slowly.

So he had a general impression of the town owner's family.

The owner of the town is Chen Xin, his wife is Liu Jiao, and his daughter is Chen Xiu. There are three people in the family. There are probably one or two servants in the house, but they sound more like long-term workers doing rough work. It's not the kind of wealthy family in a high-end compound that Li Wuxiang imagined before. It sounds more like a powerful landlord in this town who has raised more than 40 soldiers and has a close relationship with relatives and friends. , but it is enough to firmly control this small town with a current population of about 600.

Judging from more details relayed by Xue Baoping, the family is not completely out of work. The town owner occasionally brings his servants and some soldiers to work in the fields. The town owner's daughter is more like a jade lady than a lady, and has a bad temperament. Because of his father's status, he is particularly surly and arrogant, and a bit greedy.

This information is quite helpful for what he wants to do next.

He was getting more and more uncomfortable these days. After absorbing the flesh, blood, essence and blood of the three members of the Wang family, it was only slightly digested last night, and the blood and qi in the body circulated a little more smoothly. He tried practicing Guangchanzi again, hoping to completely vomit and refine all the residue in his body, but after using it for a short while, he felt an extremely strong sense of hunger.

Vegetarian foods such as rice noodles can only bring a little false comfort when entering the mouth, and things like dried meat can only be suppressed for a short time. He thought that the steaming, pulsating flesh and blood would soon I'm going crazy, I feel like I'm going to turn into soft human skin again.

There must be some way around this. Or re-refining elixirs similar to Marching Pills, or there are other auxiliary means for Guangchanzi's practice. This requires him to determine as soon as possible whether Zhao Qi and Zhao Puppet are closely related, so as to know whether they can be obtained from He found a way.

So after the meal, Li Wuxiang helped her open the door, dyed her hair with pot ash again, and took out a few pieces of broken silver: "Let's go to the street and see what delicious food I can teach you to make today." ”

The two of them walked slowly along the road to the west of the town, carefully avoiding puddles along the way. After passing two small bridges, I saw that there were gradually more and more people. When I arrived in the west of the town, I found that the roads on the street had become smoother, and some places were even paved with bluestone strips.

People looked at them along the way, not as strangers, but as if they had heard something before. But there are few such naked and rude looks like the one in the morning. Apparently, as Li Wuxiang expected, in a small town like this with little news, things that happened not long ago spread quite quickly.

Xue Baoping felt uncomfortable with this look, so he glanced at Li Wuxiang and found that he smiled quickly at him. She subconsciously stretched out her hand to grab the corner of Li Wuxiang's clothes, but reacted the next moment and quickly pinched the corner of her own clothes and took a deep breath.

Two-story buildings began to appear in the most prosperous area in the west of the town. The streets were slightly wider and could accommodate two carriages. Some people set up stalls on the roadside, selling sundries. Most of them had mud marks on them. They should be Fished out of the river. This place is very similar to the ancient street scene in Li Wuxiang's mind, with wet stone slabs, low wooden houses, polished steps with fluffy moss on the sides, and skinny and dry people.

I saw several shops selling cloth, rice noodles, and oil, a food shop that I didn't know was closed, and a few vendors selling vegetables, fruits, and vegetables on the roadside. He stopped and looked at it as if no one else was around. The dealer didn't greet him, but looked at it carefully. There were very few types, some of which he couldn't recognize, but when he saw half of a winter melon, he knew what to teach Xue Baoping today.

We walked further and walked to a diagonally T-shaped street. Diagonally across the road was a shop with a slightly larger front. It had four doors and a counter on the left. There were shelves on both sides. There was a sign beside the door: "Chen." Household groceries”.

This is the property of the town owner Chen Xin, and it is also the place where he will come to purchase today.

There were a few people standing by the wall of the shop, leaning against the wall and talking with their arms folded. One of them was Chen Sanqiao. Now his head was wrapped in a piece of cloth soaked in blood that turned dark brown. When he saw Li Wuxiang, his eyes widened and he stood up and took two steps forward.

Li Wuxiang also stopped and stared at him. The two looked at each other for a while, then Chen Sanjie spat on the ground and retreated. Several people around him said a few words to him and looked over together.

Li Wuxi smiled at them and walked into the shop.

In the shop is an old shopkeeper, tall and thin, standing behind the counter. When he walked in, he didn't stare like others, he only glanced at him and continued to calculate lazily. Li Wuxiang walked to the counter, said hello politely, took out a thin wooden board from his sleeve and put it on the counter: "Excuse me, help me look for these few things - I want an extra pound of sugar." , I don’t know if there is any lime.”

The old shopkeeper didn't stop. He glanced at the thin wooden board and then stopped.

Above is Li Wuxiang's handwriting. When he was reading Guangchanzi, he had already recognized the characters through that book - they were basically the same as the traditional Chinese characters where he came from. The only difference was that some of the characters were the same as the world he came from, which were simplified characters. Many of the popular simplified characters in his place also existed in ancient times, and he couldn't tell whether they were the same here.

But that doesn't take away from the fact that his handwriting is beautiful. Although it is written with charcoal sticks, it is neat and slender, at least not inferior to that of Chen's store.

The old shopkeeper stared at his handwriting, couldn't help but glance at him, and then said slowly: "White sugar, brown sugar?"

"White sugar is the best."

"The sugar is damp."

Li Wuxiang smiled: "It doesn't matter, I'll buy it at the market price."

The old shopkeeper looked at Xue Baoping again and nodded: "Just wait."

He turned around and took out a few pieces of paper from under the cabinet. Li Yuan squinted to check the number, then put another piece back, and then slowly moved to the shelf to look for the things he listed.

Xue Baoping hid behind the wall and waited, while Li Wuxiang turned around and looked at the people outside who were also looking at him. Many details that would be unremarkable to ordinary people contain a wealth of information for him. For example, although the people in the town are skinny, they are curious about themselves and rushed to the river to fish for people yesterday. This means that they feel that life in the town is not too bad at the moment. This shows that the rule of the town owner here Not very harsh.

The town's commerce is simple, and the variety of vegetables and fruits on the roadside is scarce, which means that communication with the outside world is not very convenient. Perhaps it is a remote place in this world, so the "Eight Parts of Xuanjiao" mentioned by Xue Baoping There is no way to rule.

The town upstream of Jinshui is "Lijiawan Town", where the Li and Xie families live. But this time, the continuous heavy rain first caused a flash flood in the upper section of Bishan, destroying half of the town, and then caused the Jinshui River to burst its embankment in a bend there, destroying the other half. In a small town with a population of nearly a thousand, nothing was left in two days.

The people who were staring at him and talking among themselves gradually became a little tired of his interested eyes, or perhaps their curiosity was satisfied and they gradually dispersed. After a while, a garrison soldier came over. Just like what he had seen from afar before, he was wearing a navy blue cloth and carrying a stick with iron wrapped at both ends.

The garrison soldier frowned slightly and took two steps towards the door of the shop, but suddenly froze, stopped, and retreated to the side of the road, leaning on the stick to look.

Li Wuxiang also turned sideways and pretended to look at the goods and glanced into the shop - before, the garrison soldier was staring at him, as if he was going to come up and question him, but his eyes suddenly glanced over his shoulder into the shop and then walked back. When Li Wuxiang glanced at this, he saw that the door curtain leading to the inner room of the main hall of the shop swayed gently, as if it had just been put down.

Then, he heard a slight ding-dong sound, as if some stone tool accidentally touched the door panel. At this time, the sky cleared up, and the setting sun shone into the door obliquely. He smiled at Xue Baoping, walked slowly to the door, and stood in the afterglow of the setting sun.

So the town owner's only daughter behind the door curtain saw Li Wuxiang clearly through the gap in the curtain.

The profile of this handsome boy was set off by the golden sunlight, making his facial features softer, as if he had walked out of a painting. He wore a short cloth shirt and cloth shoes. The clothes were made slightly loose like most people. But his clothes were folded finely on both sides and tied with a belt, which made this kind of thing look elegant and simple on him.

Chen Xiu frowned slightly, looked at him, and recalled the words he heard from the town people at noon - a wild boy who was fished out of the mud, rude and impolite, a scoundrel who didn't care about his life... But none of these words could match the young man standing at the door now.

She had never seen anyone in the town speak like him, unhurried, clear, and gentle. And he could read, so he should write well, otherwise Chen Dazhang would not have looked at him again after reading his handwriting.

Zhao Qi, the new Qigong master who had recently made her father do things, looked a bit like him, but Chen Xiu had seen Zhao Qi cough up a mouthful of phlegm while eating, and spit it on the ground without paying attention to others. And Zhao Qi was cold and indifferent to others, not like him at all... He smiled again and said several words to Xue... what was it.

He couldn't be from an ordinary family, he should be a young master from Lijiawan above... It's so pitiful, his family is gone, his parents are gone, and today he has to be bullied in Jinshui...

Chen Xiu covered her bracelet and stared at him until she heard Chen Zhangxiang ask him "What is this fennel" and he turned his face, then she quickly stepped back.

"Aniseed... that's the kind with eight corners, a spice... Star anise?" Li Wuxiang glanced at the curtain while speaking, smiling apologetically, "Maybe your name is different, I should have written it more clearly."

"It's star anise." Chen Dazhang nodded, walked to the counter with some wrapped oil paper bags in his hand and put them down, and looked at him again, "Is your last name Li?"

Li Wuxiang was slightly stunned, and turned his left toe towards the door: "Yeah."

"Well, I guess he is also the young master of the Li family in Lijiawan." Chen Dazhang sighed slowly, "When I was young, I was an apprentice at Heshengji in your town. That's your family's property, right?"

Li Wuxiang turned his toes back. He originally had that kind of light and polite smile on his face, but now it was replaced by a gloomy look, and he just let out a sigh.

"It's good to be alive." The shopkeeper shook his head, nodded at him again, and slowly walked away to find quicklime for him.

Li Wuxiang turned his head to look at Xue Baoping, and she also let out a sigh.

Two chapters merged into one. Sorry, I accidentally deleted chapter 21